


Things that Should Kill Men

by Ace_Strider



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Based on a Tumblr Post, Bisexual Gaston (Disney), Eventual Happy Ending, Gaston Redemption (Disney), Gay LeFou (Disney), M/M, Pining LeFou (Disney), Playing with curses, Redemption, Tumblr Prompt, but he isnt the focus, him and Gaston dont really interact in this, i am not good with tags, it just kinda goes over aspects of their relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 22:43:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21089018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ace_Strider/pseuds/Ace_Strider
Summary: Original Post: https://stridinguptoruinlives.tumblr.com/post/165458819993/quousque-curlicuecal-chamomile-geodeThere are things that kill men. Things that should kill men. And then there are these wonderful, horrible, awe inspiring, fear inducing moments when those things don’t kill men.One of these moments is when Gaston falls. He falls—but it’s not very far. Not very far at all. Enough to hurt, certainly. Enough to, perhaps, have killed him, but it doesn’t. He falls and he lives and then he wants to die.He didn’t know about the curse. And he definitely didn’t know that while a curse can be broken, it cannot be destroyed. It transfers.





	Things that Should Kill Men

There are things that kill men. Things that should kill men. And then there are these wonderful, horrible, awe inspiring, fear inducing moments when those things don’t kill men.

One of these moments is when Gaston falls. He falls—but it’s not very far. Not very far at all. Enough to hurt, certainly. Enough to, perhaps, have killed him, but it doesn’t. He falls and he lives and then he _wants_ _to_ **_die_**.

He didn’t know about the curse. And he definitely didn’t know that while a curse can be broken, it cannot be destroyed. It _transfers_.

***

Gaston doesn’t stick around when he realizes what’s happened. Even a man like him, one who sees so little, can’t miss the way his hands have turned into massive paws with claws longer than the fingers he once possessed. So he climbs swiftly down the side of the castle where he landed, transformed body screaming with pain from his lasting injuries and the horrid shifting of his bones, and escapes into the woods. The woods are safe, he thinks, even as he doesn’t think. They won’t look in the woods.

He spends three weeks among the tall oaks and elms and willows, never registering that they were something other than simply trees, simply coverage. It’s easy enough, he’s taken hunting trips that have lasted this long, and there were times in the war where it felt as if they were wild beasts themselves, living on very little and sleeping in the dirt. He doesn’t try to hunt, couldn’t without his bow or a gun (he won’t resort himself to an animal and use his teeth), so he eats what berries he can find. He never thinks to eat the ones he definitely knows are poisonous; for now he’s liking his wounds.

He avoids looking any time he gets a drink of water from the river, creeks, pond he finds. He isn’t whatever he has become. <strike>Whatever _they’ve_ made him.</strike>

***

The fourth week comes and he’s starving. His body still aches, he still stumbles and falls too often from too big feet that don’t lay flat against the ground, and every time he moves his head is getting caught because of these damn _antlers_, but he’s starving and that means it’s time. Time to go back to the village. Time to rally the people again to his side. Time to go after the woman who’s ruined his life, who’s probably still living in that damn castle with those _things_. With that **_Beast_**.

It takes him some a few hours to make his way back. He doesn’t know this part of the woods like he knows the others, there are no landmarks to recognize except those he’s stared at for three weeks, all within ten feet of the area he’s been <strike>hiding</strike> resting in. But finally things begin to look familiar and he trips out onto the green hills that surround the village, letting the sun bathe him in its gorgeous amber light. He sees the village and he grins, sharp teeth exposing themselves, because soon. _Soon_.

It’s a shock they don’t see him long before he lumbers past the outer wall. The first people to see him scream and run but he expected that. Whatever it is he’s been turned into is not pretty. He looks a monster now, he knows it, and while he wasn’t frightened by the Beast’s appearance, he knows many of the others were. He’s sure he looks like the Beast now, except the antlers. (And then? Then would Belle finally agree to marry him? She wouldn’t have a choice this time, he would see to that, but if he looked like her Beast? Obviously the mad woman preferred this over his own beauty, perhaps it would actually convince her.) So he’s understandable. He doesn’t rush any of the villagers, doesn’t growl at them, doesn’t try to grab them. Instead, he chuckles at their sweet cowardly ways and follows slowly after them.

He does call after them though, finally, when he’s made it four streets in and it seems as if all they plan to do is scream and run. He watches them halt at his voice and he thinks _yes_. Yes, they remember me. Of course they remember me. And they’ll help me like they did before because even people as stupid as them know that they can’t allow the Beast to live.

A crowd gathers. It seems the entire village gathers when word rapidly spreads that Gaston is back. The man in question waits with his chest puffed out and a satisfied smirk on his face, not realizing that, as more people gather, the cries of surprise turn into cries of anger. Of disgust. Of dismissal. He starts to speak, to rally them to his cause, and that’s when the first arrow is fired at him. It doesn’t come close, some horrid baker or something must have shot it, but it startles him. Why did they do that? Why are they firing at him? Why are they shouting now, screaming, telling him to go?

Baying for his blood.

They gather closer towards him with pitchforks and torches and any sharp weapon they could find in their scramble to reach him but only a few slash out. They want to scream at him and he doesn’t understand. They’re screaming about a prince and how he’s the one to blame and how he lead them there to kill their friends, families. He doesn’t understand and they’re closing in, slashing more now as their anger builds up, and it enrages him.

There’s blood alright.

It’s not Gaston’s.

He escapes back into the forest with half the village on his tail but he doesn’t care. His insides are boiling as he runs, tripping and stumbling and getting caught in the branches _because of these fuCKING ANTLERS_. He roars but he doesn’t hear it as his body finds the path back to that castle. To that accursed place where Belle sits, happy with her monster and _mocking_ _him_. Where she’s turned the village, all those who admired him, against him. Where he is going to **RIPHERAPART!!!!**

***

There are guards at the castle. There are guards everywhere it seems. And men with guns. And still the villagers who seem to have known exactly where he’d go.

***

There’s a second moment. Gaston doesn’t die.

He returns back to the trees he doesn’t _see_ and licks more wounds than he had before.

***

His first time killing something with his claws, it’s just a rabbit that didn’t sense the danger that he was. He risks a fire. He won’t eat it raw.

***

He comes to the conclusion that he would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for LeFou. Yes, it’s LeFou’s fault. He knows it is. He saw him in the crowd, he saw him. If he had stepped forward and stood by his side like he was _supposed_ _to_, he would have gotten to Belle and given the woman exactly what she deserved.

He comes to the decision to kill LeFou soon after coming to this. LeFou and then Belle and then the Beast she loved so much. Because it was all the Beast’s fault to begin with and that’s what he deserved. To see Belle die first.

***

He prowls the village walls at night, careful to stay out of view. He’s even taller than he used to be and twice as broad but he knows the routine of the watch, when there is one. He helped make it. So no one spots him. It’s how he finds out that his home has been raided, nothing left but a large bear-skin rug that he takes, leaving deep claw marks in the wood when he snatches it up. It’s also how he finds out that LeFou’s house is empty as well.

He’s moved.

***

LeFou moved into the castle.

***

He watches at night. He can’t come too close to the castle during the day, it’s too easy to spot himself, he’s sure (he still hasn’t looked at his reflection), but at night he can stay hidden. He doesn’t see much but he’s patient. This is a hunt and he’s always patient on a hunt.

It leaves him too much time to think though and he gets irritated. On long hunts, LeFou would always be there to distract him from the buzz of his brain. He’d ask for stories and Gaston would tell him one after the other until a buck was foolish enough to wander into his path or they finally caught up to one they’d been following. But LeFou isn’t there to distract him anymore. LeFou is in the castle. LeFou is with _Belle_. And he’s alone. With his thoughts. Waiting.

He doesn’t have a lot of thoughts. He doesn’t realize that though. He’s just upset that under all that anger, all that he’s built up, there’s the blackness that threatens to swallow him with wailing moans that he isn’t good enough to get this done. That he was _never_ good enough.

***

When he sleeps, which is rarely now, he has nightmares.

He was used to them before.

They’re worse.

***

The villagers don’t stop hunting him. At least, some of them don’t. And every day there’s a sweep done by some of the men from the castle so his position always changes.

***

Stanley lives in the castle too, he discovers, one night when he manages to get closer than he has before. He lives in the castle and him and LeFou are walking together in the gardens. They’re talking about something but even with the ears Gaston has discovered are better than his old ones, he can’t make out what they’re whispering about.

They’re walking close, heads bent low, hands brushing at their sides.

Gaston startles when Stanley finally grasps the hand beside his own instead of letting them continue swinging. He startles again when LeFou doesn’t pull away.

***

He knew about LeFou. He’s the only one that seemed to know. But now...

Now, LeFou has Stanley. And LeFou has Belle. And LeFou has the Beast. And he’s forgotten all about Gaston.

***

He hunts. Properly hunts. He learns that if he drops to all fours, he’s faster than he is on two legs, and that his teeth are just as sharp as his claws.

He doesn’t bother with a fire this time. It doesn’t matter, he’s hungry.

***

Days turn into weeks that turn into months and he forgets why he’s even stalking the castle grounds. He moves around during the day though no villagers try to come after him anymore and the sweeps from the castle have stopped. He settles in a cave that stinks of wolf, laying the bear rug he’d taken from the village out on the floor in some semblance of the life he once lived. But he starts to forget why he roams around the castle every night, looking for even a glimpse of a familiar face. It starts to not matter.

***

Belle is out one night. For the first time since he attacked. There’s a man at her side and she looks at him as if he’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

Gaston bursts from the trees and as he comes towards them he wonders, briefly, fleetingly, if the Beast feels betrayed seeing her with this man.

The man who aims for his throat with a sword he keeps strapped to his side and chases after him when he is forced to run yet again, the guards that swiftly arrive too much for him.

***

The searches resume. The hunting starts back up. Gaston doesn’t care anymore. He attacks the castle as frequently as he can and those who search for him even more. But they drive him away, further and further away until he’s in parts of the forest no one’s traveled through in decades, he thinks.

He roars and howls and claws at the trees around him. He grabs rocks, _boulders_, and throws them as far as he can. He slams paws into hard bark and his head into the dirt and wishes that the sounds he made were screams as he condemned them all for doing this to him.

***

There are other villages. Gaston flits between them, staying always in the trees except when it’s dark enough for him to slink along more deserted streets. He attacks travelers for their food and the villages send hunters. He avoids them, most of the time. They hurt him, some of the time.

There is plenty of forest. Gaston hunts in it. He chases deer, traps rabbit, brings down the occasional horse that broke loose and wandered too far in. He catches them with his teeth, with his claws, with his crushing strength. It feels better than the hunting he used to do, somehow.

***

Some days, he feels himself slipping, and he has to remind himself who he is. The persisting nightmares help. The flashes of his old life though are like ghosts haunting his every moment.

***

He forgets what real food tastes like. He only knows what travelers keep in their bags and the uncooked meat of what he catches.

***

He forgets what a fire feels like. On very cold nights where his fur doesn’t feel like enough and the rug he’s carried all the way from his village feels like a lie.

***

He forgets why he even took the rug. Why he even has the rug. He forgets even killing the bear it came from and only thinks that it should be warmer.

***

Gaston finally sees himself in the still reflection of a lake and the sound he makes is as inhuman as he appears. He is bigger than any many could hope to be. He is wider than two doors put together. His fur hangs in long thick sheets, tangled and matted with all sorts of things. His teeth are long and sharp, covered with blood still, and his eyes are a glowing yellow like some dog’s. Atop his head are the largest set of antlers he’s ever seen in his life, larger than any of those he’d hung in his home, with so many points jutting off that they’ve become twisted together in a way that looked painful, especially with the moss and vines that encircled them.

He is a monster. He is a beast.

***

Word spreads of the monster in the forest. Of the creature twice as tall as any man with the face of a wolf, the antlers of a monsterous buck, and the eyes of a demon. Antlers like his would make for good decorating, he knows. He’d have killed once, he thinks, to have antlers like his hanging on his wall. So he is hunted worse than he has been in….He doesn’t know how much time has passed.

They find him. The last thing he remembers as he tries to breathe through the pain is the farm he stumbles upon and the figure slowly approaching from the house.

***

He’s surprised when he wakes up. And not only because he’s in a barn, laying on dry hay, in considerable less pain than he thought he should be in. He thinks that this is the third but he can’t recall what it is exactly the third _of_.

Then someone clears their throat and he yelps, fear clawing at his throat and pushing all other thoughts aside.

“You called for help.” His eyes, wide and wild like an animal’s, latch onto an almost petite looking man standing near on the opposite side of the barn. He was watching him intently, seeming ready to run out the slightly opened doors just in case Gaston was angry. “And you talk in your sleep. You sound like a man but I’m sure you know you don’t look like one.” The man titled his head in a familiar little way and the beast felt his paws clench into something resembling fists. “What are you?”

The beast roars as loudly as he can and the man quickly flees.

***

He falls asleep in the hay again, after the man leaves, because he can’t move. He’s heavily bandaged and everything is still too painful. There’s a plate of food, a large plate of food, set beside him when he wakes. It’s a shock but he scarfs it down without question, too hungry to care, even though it’s incredibly painful even to bend the little bit to grab the plate.

Later, again, when he wakes for the second time, there’s food on a clearly different plate waiting for him.

***

The man is back again the third time the beast struggles back into consciousness, standing a good distance away with what looks like more bandages in his arms. At his feet is a large bowl filled with water and a pitcher that the beast hopes is full. He’s thirsty, his throat feels like rocks are embedded in it.

“I need to change your bandages.” The man tells him as he eyes the pitcher like it’s the only thing that’ll save him. The beast doesn’t answer him. “If I come near you, are you gonna hurt me?” The man asks. The beast’s eyes slowly, almost painfully, slide up to look at him. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know. The man hesitates but then he squares his shoulder and lifts his chin. “If you let me help you, I’ll give you water. Deal?”

The beast growls low and considers ripping the little man apart but ultimately nods when he realizes even the small action of growling leaves his chest aching. The man seems pleased enough as he comes over, leaving the pitcher behind but bringing the bowl. He pointedly sets it out of reach before going to work on the bandages. The beast snarls a little when the man brings out a knife, flashes his teeth, but all the man does is carefully slice away the old bandages, making sure the beast can see every little move he makes as he does so. He actually sets the knife where the beast can grab it and he makes him wonder distantly whether the man was an idiot or trying to appease him.

The cut away bandages, after being very carefully peeled from his body, revealed wounds that had the beast turning his head. The man winces sympathetically before grabbing for some of the things he’s brought. The beast could smell them before he opened their little jars and cringed at the scent. Herbs. Ointments. The type doctors used. The type that reminded him of battlefields and death and nightmares he could never shake though now it made his head hurt to think about why or where they came from. He flinches away on reflex when the man goes to put some of the ointment on an arrow wound and ends up hissing through clenched teeth for it.

“Don’t move. I know not everyone likes these but you need them.” The man snaps at him, though his fingers gently petting the beast’s arm says he isn’t too angry. The action makes the beast want to squirm away though and, thankfully, the man quickly stops. The beast watches the man as the man watches the beast as he applies the ointment to the first wound. A wound, the beast notices, that is stitched up. “You were much easier to help when you were unconscious.” The man jokes. At least, it might be a joke.

The beast doesn’t thank him when he finishes rebandaging him, the beast doesn’t speak at all. Not even when the man asks him his name.

***

The man’s name is Michael. It’s common. Boring.

The beast doesn’t care.

***

The man gives him the water and he feels as if it’s the first time he’s drank water in years.

***

Has it been years?

***

The man comes back every day after that, catching the beast when he’s awake now that he can stay awake. The beast doesn’t acknowledge him except to eat the food he brings and drink the water he brings in. The man talks a lot.

The beast thinks about when he’s better. He’ll have to kill the man. He can’t have the villagers come for him again.

***

The man, Michael, whatever grows flowers and sells them in town. The beast snorts at the man when he tells him this, something inside him stirring. It feels a bit like rage but it’s not that. He still remembers what rage tastes like, though it’s lost meaning.

***

“Come on, I know you can talk, beastie. Just give me a name! You’ve got to have a name.”

***

The beast starts to get better. He can sit up and eat, even twist his upper body a bit. But his chest still hurts too much from all the little pellets Michael dug out and his leg is still done for for a while. Then a storm hits, drenching the barn all the way to the inside. It’s the first time the beast gets sick in a very long time.

***

“I’m sorry the villagers did this to you.” Michael says one night after the beast has coughed up what feels like every last bit of his insides. “You were just hungry. You never killed anyone till they came after you.”

“I don’t need your pity.” The beast snarls at him, speaking for the first time. He doesn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.

***

Michael brings flowers in the next time. The beast growls and sniffs loudly. “Stop that. I need help tying these together and since you aren’t doing anything.” He dumps a basket of flowers into the beast’s arms. The beast looks at him as if he’s gone mad. “You don’t want my pity. Wasn’t offering any to begin with but if you’re going to act like an angry child, I’m going to put you to work. Tie.” He threw a ball of twine into the beast’s lap before settling himself down with the same tools.

The beast dumped the basket and the twine onto the floor beside his hay bed. “Men don’t bundle flowers.” He snaps his teeth on the last word, making sure he’s taken seriously.

“Good thing you’re not a man.” Michael immediately shoots back, not bothering to look up from his task until the beast has fallen back. Something soft flashes across his face when he sees the look on the beast’s face but it quickly disappears. “It earns me money. I enjoy it. Doesn’t matter that I’m a man. I could sew and it wouldn’t matter. Do sew actually, though. Haven’t had someone to sew for me in a long time.” He goes silent after that.

He finishes his basket long before the beast ever touches his again. The beast knows he kept the other basket, the other ball of twine, to hopefully prove his point and he tells himself not to touch them.

But it gets very boring throughout the day and he wants to avoid the dreams at night.

***

He has the flowers bundled by the time Michael brings him breakfast the next morning.

***

Michael continues to bring him flowers and soon the beast can tell that Michael has moved as much of his work as he possibly can into the barn. He is always there and the beast doesn’t argue with it, thinking that Michael will take away his distraction if he points anything out. There’s two now. The distraction of bundling and the distraction of listening to Michael go on and on about whatever he can come up with.

The beast starts to remember a few things as he listens to Michael. Some things definitely come back into focus.

***

“Gaston.” He finally admits when he’s well enough to leave and still hasn’t. When he’s moving around the barn like it’s his own home. He remembers a home. And a bear rug. And a deep feeling of betrayal. “That’s my name.”

***

He still doesn’t know how many years it’s been. But he knows that memories shouldn’t come back with such clarity. He guesses that it’s part of the curse and that losing those memories was apart of it too.

***

Sometimes, curses change to fit those who have it. Curses are meant to teach a lesson after all, and no one learns the same. But of course, the beast, Gaston, doesn’t know this.

***

He leaves the barn for the first time when Michael asks him to look at the roof of his little home, claiming there’s a leak. There’s a moment where he’s standing at the edge of what seems the world, staring out at the forest he once lived in. The thought to go, to just walk away, enters his mind. But he turns to the house and makes his way to where Michael is pointing. He’s getting his memories back but nothing could make him forget how lonely it was out there.

***

Gaston starts to come back. He can tell Michael doesn’t like it.

***

“We’ve had this discussion. Now pick the damn flowers.”

“This is women’s work.”

“Then congratulations, you’re a woman. Work is work, Gaston. If it feeds you, if it makes you happy, it doesn’t matter what it is.”

***

Michael says his father was in the war, that’s how he knows how to patch people up. The night he says it, Gaston has a nightmare that frightens him so badly that he comes awake roaring with fear. Michael rushes into the barn to see what’s wrong and ends up staying the whole night, sleeping nearby in case Gaston needs him.

***

“You need a bath.”

“No.”

“At least let me clean your antlers.”

“No.”

“They’re growing things!”

***

Michael goes to cut firewood and Gaston mocks him, tells him to let a real man do it. He’s smacked so hard on the nose, with a very long stick, that he actually whimpers.

Michael doesn’t speak to him for a few days after. Gaston learns to stop insulting Michael’s stance as a man.

***

“But she said no.” Michael points out one day when Gaston gets the courage and the rage needed to tell him about the past he now remembers. “Why keep going after her?”

“She was the only one I wanted. The only one good enough for me.”

Michael’s eyebrows shot high up on his forehead. “You think an awful lot of yourself, Gaston, and it’s not sounding like you do it for a reason. Just because you want someone doesn’t mean you get to have them. Especially when they’ve already said no.”

***

“They did this to me!”

“I don’t think they did.”

***

Gaston is eventually forced to take a bath. Michael helps him work tangles from his fur and diligently removes years’ worth of vegetation on his antlers.

“They’re beautiful.” Michael whispers with awe when he has them all clear. Gaston immediately puffs up with pride.

***

“_They_ did this to me! _They_ did!”

“You did it to yourself.”

***

Michael asks if he had any real friends.

Gaston thinks of LeFou and answers.

No.

***

“You’re frightening sometimes, you know that?”

Gaston looks up from the log he just split in two with his bare hands and grins wickedly, teeth flashing. “I know.”

***

Michael leaves for the village sometimes. An hour there and an hour back with a whole day in between. Gaston hates it. He hates it so much. Michael tells him to relax while he’s gone, relax because he’s been working so hard, but he can’t. Idle time makes the darkness churning around deep inside him rear its ugly head.

***

“What about LeFou?”

“LeFou betrayed me. He was never my friend.”

“….Gaston, you threatened to out him if he didn’t follow you and then you abandoned him to killer furniture. I would betray you too.”

***

“You left him to die?!”

***

Gaston doesn’t understand why Michael listens to him. Or why Michael even believes half the things he’s saying. He really can’t believe that Michael hasn’t sent him away yet, considering every memory he has seems to enrage the flower seller to no end.

***

“LeFou is a cruel name. Who would name their child that?”

“His mother named him something else. He likes LeFou better.”

“Why?”

Gaston shrugs but, after a moment, gives an answer. “Pride.”

***

Michael looks so relieved the first time he comes back from the village and Gaston is still there.

***

“Red huh? Don’t know why but I thought you would like blue more.”

“Red’s the color of blood.”

“Oh alright, that’s not scary or anything.”

“What’s yours?”

Michael studies him a long moment before breaking out into a grin. “Green.”

Gaston snorts.

***

Michael teaches him the types of flowers, types of plants, types of trees. Gaston looks out at the forest he lived in with new interest.

He also realizes that, once upon a time, he’d eaten berries and mushrooms he really shouldn’t have and hadn’t died. Hadn’t felt a thing. He’s running out of moments, he thinks, though he doesn’t understand the thought all the way. It’s subconscious, rooted in something too deep for man or beast to fully understand.

***

“You look like that and you think I’m gonna doubt anything you say? Gaston, I’m not trying to offend you, but an appearance like yours doesn’t come around naturally.”

***

Michael can cook wonderful meals. Gaston really cannot but he catches their meat for them, careful not to bring anything back too gruesome looking.

He asks Michael only once if he’d like a pelt from anything he catches. There’s a brief argument <strike>fight</strike> when Michael says no but it’s fine.

When Michael says it’d be a bit like seeing Gaston skinned and pinned to the wall, the beast’s maw snaps shut.

***

He doesn’t miss the bear rug he once had. It was a lie anyways.

***

“Do you miss the village?”

“They tried to kill me.”

“Before that.”

“…”

***

“How about Belle? Still think about her?”

“Don’t want to.”

“Still wish she’d have just married you?”

“I wouldn’t look like this if she had.”

“You look like this because you never listened when she said no.”

***

“You miss the war.”

“It was simple back then.”

***

“She was with someone else. How could she do that to him?”

“…”

***

Gaston likes picking flowers and bundling them up to sell, it’s peaceful.

***

Summer is beautiful. The farm is beautiful. Michael’s smile is better than all of it.

That thought is the most terrifying thought Gaston has ever had.

***

It’s odd, how one can shift from blaming others, to blaming themselves, without ever really noticing.

***

“I shouldn’t have…”

Gaston doesn’t finish his sentence and Michael doesn’t press him. He knows he’ll admit everything in his own time and, in part, this is an admission to everything he’s done.

***

“You’re an imbecile.” Gaston grunts as he pulls Michael from the river he’d fallen into.

“Your imbecile.” Michael grins cheekily, drenched to the bone.

***

Gaston hurts Michael.

It’s an accident, he was having a nightmare and Michael got too close to wake him up, but it happens. Gaston hurts Michael and he feels sick. So very very sick.

Michael tells him it’s just a scratch as he rapidly bandages his arm, fighting back tears, and Gaston huffs and bellows like an animal in pain. Michael has to ride to the village, in the dead of night in the soaking rain, to ensure that what Gaston has done doesn’t kill him and Gaston roars as he watches him go.

***

He wants to be a beast again. It was better when he was the beast. It was constant fear and pain, hunting and being hunted, but it was better than **_this_**.

He’s gone when Michael returns.

***

Gaston doesn’t leave for good. He stays in the forest around the farm that isn’t a farm, that has no animals for him to spook besides apathetic chickens, and watches. Michael shouts for him and rushes around, desperately looking, when he first comes back and realizes Gaston isn’t there. He runs out into the trees, missing Gaston’s hiding place (because he’s gotten very good at hiding), and looks. It’s not till dark that Michael finally returns home. But only for a minute. He’s gone for a lantern now and he rushes back into the gloom, as if there was nothing to fear.

Gaston tracks him and his smell keeps away anything else that would come for Michael.

***

One day turns into two into three into six into ten. Michael keeps looking, keeps calling out to him, keeps leaving food out when he finally drags himself inside in defeat to rest a few hours. He ignores his plants, the chickens, everything. He’s focused on finding Gaston, who is focused on staying hidden.

***

It takes two more days before Michael makes himself focus back on his business and taking care of himself. But he spends half the day looking up at the trees and half the night calling to him. Begging him to come home. Gaston shudders at the word. What is home?

***

Gaston thinks as he watches Michael and he doesn’t try to stop himself anymore. He thinks about what he did. He thinks about what he’s done. He thinks about LeFou and Belle and the other Beast. He thinks about all the people in the village.

He lets the darkness consume him and thinks he’s a monster. That he’s always been a monster, from even before the war, and who was he kidding pretending otherwise?

***

“You’re frightening sometimes, you know that?”

***

Michael sits at the edge of the trees and screams and cries and begs him to come back. Please. Please come back.

Gaston hides away, paws squashed down over his too sensitive ears, and wonders _why_.

***

He’s Gaston, he’s decided, when the day comes where Michael screams into the trees that he doesn’t care if Gaston ever comes back. He’s Gaston, not a beast, not some primal creature, because no animal would ever be as cruel as he is.

***

He treated LeFou the worst. He treated Belle bad, he knows that now, Michael was good at drilling that through his thick skull, and he did try to kill the other Beast, but he still thinks he treated LeFou the worst. He was his friend, his only friend, his truest friend, and _he_ had betrayed _him_, Gaston had betrayed LeFou, in more ways than one. He’d used LeFou’s affections against him, used him as a joke, took credit for his ideas and actions. He’d threatened to out him, have him thrown in the loony bin, and left him to die at the hands of unnatural things in order to look like the hero. He’d been dismissive and cruel. He treated LeFou the worst.

***

Belle deserved to be happy. Belle was right in never caring for him. He’d been her only exception, her being kind to even the villagers that mocked her, and she’d been right to make him that way.

***

He pities the other Beast.

***

The village had loved him once, he realizes. Once. Not all the time. When he had fist saved the village, yes, and when he had returned from war, most certainly, but after? After the war had faded out and he’d grown even more? No. Their love had gone away. He’d just been another man to them then and it had killed him. He’d chased after their love and admiration and failed to get it each time.

***

It’s his own fault he’s turned out like this. His and his alone.

***

There’s a storm. Michael gets sick. Gaston doesn’t see him for days and then he watches in horror as someone from the village comes to the house and gets him, taking him in a hurried rush to get help in town.

Part of the horror is seeing Michael so sick, so deathly pale.

The other part is when he realizes this is the first time anyone else has come to the farm in the entire time he has stayed with Michael. He left Michael _alone_.

***

Michael comes back and the man who saved him, who took him into town, comes back with him.

***

Gaston stalks the farm for a whole new reason now as every day the man, Louis, as Michael calls him, seems to force himself more and more into Michael’s life.

***

“So whatever happened to that new friend you made?”

“Louis, stop.”

***

“He left.”

***

Louis is Michael’s cousin who lives in the village. Gaston is so relieved he thinks he’ll cry and he hates himself for it.

***

Returning to Michael happens by accident.

It’s Louis’s doing and it’s not on purpose. How could it be? Innocent Louis still has no clue about what Gaston really is. Or how dangerous the world is either, apparently. He’s attacked in the forest when he goes hunting, despite Michael’s clear orders not to go out there. It’s a wolf, accidentally backed into a corner by Louis. He’s not bitten, or even hurt, but he’s so frightened by Gaston’s sudden appearance to protect him that he faints, knocking his head hard on the ground. There’s no leaving him out there till he wakes, not with yet another storm on the way, and so Gaston is forced to lay the boy across his shoulder and carry him back to the farm.

Michael is far from happy when he sees him.

***

“WHY DID YOU LEAVE?”

Michael’s screaming and it hurts but Gaston doesn’t lift his paws to cover his ears. “Because I hurt you.”

***

“He’ll be fine.”

“Good…..”

“If you leave again, I’m going to shoot you.”

***

“I hurt you, Michael!”

“It was an accident!”

“It doesn’t matter! I’m a monster! I’ve always been a monster! You should have let me **_DIE!_**”

***

“I should have let you _die_?! _I should have let you die?!_”

***

Louis is so frightened when he wakes to his cousin screaming at a nearly nine foot tall monster that he passes out again.

***

“I was never going to let you die.”

“You should have.”

“Get over yourself, Gaston.”

***

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Hurt me more when you left.”

***

Michael doesn’t let him leave again, no matter how clear it is that Gaston wants to go.

He makes him stay in the barn though. The house was always too little and always grew too warm with Gaston sleeping inside but he misses it more than he can say when he finally falls asleep in the barn, nightmares already creeping in.

***

“How’s the nightmares been?”

“Worse.”

“You need to talk about it.”

***

It’s after the third time Louis wakes up and faints and during yet another screaming match that it happens.

Gaston looks down at Michael and realizes, in a heart-stopping, throat-choking, way, that he loves him. He loves Michael. More than he ever loved anyone. More than he ever loved himself. He says it too, unable to stop himself, and gapes in shock when Michael pauses in his shouting to say it back before going back into why exactly the big idiot should never have left.

***

Gaston remembers the transformation as being horrifically painful. His entire body had been on fire as his bones broke themselves and reshaped into new forms, as his skin stretched, as fur sprouted from his every inch, as his teeth were stretched and his nails lengthened into claws.

The second time he feels nothing but shooting relief all throughout his body.

***

His first thought when he sees his fingers and feels his skin and feels hair on his head without any antlers, isn’t of going back to the life he once had.

It’s how Michael is going to react.

Just as expected, Michael looks at him just the same. And whispers that he told him so because obviously he was right. It is very Michael.

***

It takes a lot of explaining to get Louis to understand when he finally wakes up. The man still needs time to process though and returns to the village. That’s good though because Gaston and Michael have a lot to talk about.

***

The realization that, maybe, the man Belle was with _was_ the Beast hits Gaston like a bullet as he walks through the forest, a man once again, remembering those first days.

He trips as much as he did back then.

***

“We should go there.” Michael suggests, looking thoughtful and eager. Gaston looks as unsure as a man possibly can. “You want forgiveness, right? You can’t get that unless you ask for it.”

***

Fingers are weird.

So are toes.

***

“They won’t want to see me. They tried to kill me.”

“We won’t know till we go.”

***

He ducks every time he nears a doorway and is startled when he doesn’t feel antlers brushing against the walls.

***

“You should grow your beard out. And keep the hair long.”

“Was planning on it.”

“Feel a little naked without the fur?”

“Yes.”

***

“I’ll watch the farm.” Louis volunteers when he hears Michael urging Gaston to return to the village. He came back about a week after leaving, looking nervous but not unsure. He’s been back every day since, each day assessing Gaston with a critical eye. Gaston doesn’t mind a bit, understanding the need to protect Michael.

***

It’s been thirty years. Michael knew about the prince that returned, all the villages in the area remember the day where suddenly him and the castle existed again, even if they were children, and they do the math together. Thirty years.

It makes Gaston feel sick.

***

“Thirty years. Surely in thirty years they’ve learned a little forgiveness.”

***

There are guards but not as many as there used to be. And they’re there but they don’t stop Gaston and Michael from walking up the front steps of the castle and knocking on the door. A man answers, no longer a _young_ man necessarily but a young looking one, with dark hair and carrying the delicious aroma of tea. His mouth, previously in a wide bright smile, falls into an o of shock. He recognizes Gaston and yells for someone named Lumiѐre.

***

Thirty years and apparently they have learned forgiveness. They didn’t want to, they all admit, but they did.

Belle is still as beautiful as she was, somehow even more so. Gaston doesn’t care about that. He apologizes and not once does he mention anything being his fault in their “relationship” but his own, because it was only his fault. She’s crying by the end of it and Gaston is soon sobbing as she shows him the kindness she’s always shown others, taking the man who hasn’t aged a day into arms that have seen thirty years of happiness and love.

Adam, the prince, the man Belle had walked with that night, admits that the searches were, at first, meant to find and kill him. Only later did they come to be just to find him, so maybe they could help him. So maybe Adam could save someone from the suffering he’d endured. Gaston tells him that it was necessary even as they both think the same thoughts. That it’s a cruel suffering, far too cruel, and that, perhaps, someone else is out there with this curse now, feeling the pain they had felt.

***

They thought Gaston died. That’s the only reason the searches stopped.

***

They have children. Sons and daughters, all as kind as their mother and as humble as their father has become.

***

Gaston learns the whole truth of what had happened that night. He learns how the furniture were people, how the man was the Beast as he thought, how the enchantress started all of it.

***

LeFou and Stanley have grown old but they’re still together. Gaston isn’t sure who is more shocked to see him but he knows that LeFou no longer loves him the second their eyes meet. It makes Gaston extremely happy and the embrace he shares with his old friend reminds him of the one they shared after a particularly gruesome battle. Relieved and caught up in each other’s existence, only filled with a brothers’ sort of love.

***

Michael instantly gets along famously with LeFou and vice versa. It’s of absolutely no surprise.

***

Gaston never had a rose. The flower, the others who were effected, those were all just for Adam. He needed them, Gaston didn’t.

Gaston never had a rose but he had moments. Wonderful, horrible, awe inspiring, fear inducing moments where he should have died and didn’t. As many as a rose has petals, he thinks, when he’s older and has had time to think of these things. He had moments.

He wonders, early in the morning before Michael wakes, because Gaston hasn’t had a nightmare to wake him in years, what the next one to get the curse will have. And the next one. And the next one. Because he knows, somewhere deep inside him he knows, that the curse will always keep going.

But just like he knows it’ll keep going, that it’ll always exist, he knows too that someday it will be stopped. Because there will be someone out there, he is sure, that cannot be saved. That cannot be loved. It was almost him.


End file.
